Today is Saturday, August 1st, 2020.

On this day in 1921, Sid Hatfield and his friend Ed Chambers were assassinated by agents of the Baldwin Felt's Detective

Agency.

It was retaliation for Hatfield's participation in the bloody Battle of Mehtuan.

Welcome to today in True Crime, a parcast original. Today we're covering the

assassinations of Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers. Let's go back to

Welch, West Virginia on the morning of August 1st, 1921.

Just before noon, Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were scheduled to appear at the McDowell

County Courthouse. Both men face charges related to a shootout over in the small town of Mohawk.

It was another episode of violence that permeated the West Virginia mining community.

Sid Hatfield was the more famous of the two men. The former police chief of

Maatuan, about 60 miles to the west of Welch, Hatfield had loudly gained a reputation

as a hero among the working miners.

In particular, he was sympathetic to miners who wanted to unionize.

Of course, this meant that Hatfield had his fair share of enemies, and his number one was the Baldwin-Felds Detective Agency.

Baldwin-Felds was formed sometime in the 1890s.

As a turn-of-the-century detective agency,

they were hired more as muscle than to solve crimes.

Increasingly, that muscle was used

to suppress workers forming unions or busting strikes.

And in West Virginia, this meant going up against coal miners.

In 1920, Baldwin Feltz was called in to handle agitation that was occurring in Mehtwan.

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